Dear flight school owner

If cutting costs is your remedy, do not cut costs on maintenance, lest you become like the school referenced on Reddit recently (see “Dear Part 61 Flight School Owner,” October 25, 2021, Flight School Business). A flight instructor recently asked about being pushed to flight instruct in an airplane that has, at any given point in time, the following issues: airspeed indicator that doesn’t go above 60 knots; rigging out of whack, so to fly straight, you “have to hold the controls about 20 degrees to the right”; tachometer placarded as reading 75 rpm high, but the engine will redline until the throttle is pulled halfway out; or an unreliable radio with frequent unreadable transmissions caused by static.

Sadly, we’ve seen situations like this across the nation from flight schools with fleets large and small, operating as Part 61 and as Part 141. Shady maintenance gives the entire industry a black eye and overshadows the efforts of flight schools with perfectly maintained aircraft. Flight schools compete, but they’re a community working toward the same goal: to produce safe, proficient pilots. To do that, we owe it to students and renters to offer them safe, well-maintained aircraft.

Let this be a case study pointing to why you prioritize maintenance at your school. Not for positive reviews on Reddit or other social media platforms. Not to give you nothing more than a competitive “edge” over your competitors. Not to hamstring you into allotting more of your budget into your aircraft.

Keep your airplanes properly maintained, and we all benefit.

Leigh Anne Whittle is marketing communications manager for Elon Aviation, Burlington, North Carolina. Whittle’s article is a response to Flight School Business’s October 26, 2021, Training Trends.